GPU performance penalty?

[AlfaProto]

A friend of mine gifted me a Sabrent PCIE 3.0x4 to 4 PCIE NVME slot. So each SSD gets x1 PCIE 3.0 lanes for Festive season.

 

I eyeballed my Z590 Vision D's bottom PCIE x16 @ x4, and it interferes with the bottom internal connectors:

 

My only other option is slotting it in the PCIE x16 @ x8

 

And the block diagram:

 

I have a RTX 3080, so what's the performance penalty on it? I intend to fill up 4TB SSD later on, thus, effectively replacing my 2x 3TB HDD.

 

And you are probably thinking, why not populate all of the M.2?

1. Unless I have 11th gen CPU, the 1st slot is unusable, M2M_SB is already populated as my OS drive

2. If populated, M2P_SB only runs at x2 speed

 

Or should I get a PCIE vertical riser? Though I couldn't find one that sticks away from the motherboard.

[Bismut]

43 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

A friend of mine gifted me a Sabrent PCIE 3.0x4 to 4 PCIE NVME slot. So each SSD gets x1 PCIE 3.0 lanes for Festive season.

That is a wild thing, I might buy one of those for myself.

 

43 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

I eyeballed my Z590 Vision D's bottom PCIE x16 @ x4, and it interferes with the bottom internal connectors:

Are you sure about that? I have had a 3rd GPU in mine and you are just unable to access the connectors, but anything below a USB 3.0 connector should work, height-wise. And since you do not have one there...

 

44 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

I have a RTX 3080, so what's the performance penalty on it? I intend to fill up 4TB SSD later on, thus, effectively replacing my 2x 3TB HDD.

It should not be as massive as you might think, PCIe Gen5x4 = PCIe Gen4x8 = PCIe Gen3x16 = PCIe Gen2x32 (yes, it is cursed but "exists").

 

45 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

Or should I get a PCIE vertical riser? Though I couldn't find one that sticks away from the motherboard.

Eh, I would - stick - to sticking things directly into your MoBo if you can help it, might land you in a - sticky - situation if not because of signal integrity.

Edited January 14, 2024 by Bismut
More info = mor ebetter

[AlfaProto]

6 hours ago, Bismut said:

That is a wild thing, I might buy one of those for myself.

I conversed with him that my mobo doesn't have much M.2, and was planning to switch my current 2 x Toshiba P300 3TB into SSD to 2 x 4TB 870 EVOs.

 

Already have a 4TB 870 EVO as my game drive--pretty happy with it, however, the latency is pretty high, if transferring from a faster medium to a slower medium.

 

And solutions running more M.2 requires bifurcation. Some how, he managed to find one that uses a simple switching/split controller. Yes, it's x1 lane for each M.2, but it still faster than SATA SSD.

6 hours ago, Bismut said:

Are you sure about that? I have had a 3rd GPU in mine and you are just unable to access the connectors, but anything below a USB 3.0 connector should work, height-wise. And since you do not have one there...

I remember that it was hitting the card's heat sink. Then again, I installed it while the my tower is standing up, not lying down. Might check again when I have my 2 4TB PCIE SSDs.

6 hours ago, Bismut said:

It should not be as massive as you might think, PCIe Gen5x4 = PCIe Gen4x8 = PCIe Gen3x16 = PCIe Gen2x32 (yes, it is cursed but "exists").

 

Eh, I would - stick - to sticking things directly into your MoBo if you can help it, might land you in a - sticky - situation if not because of signal integrity.

I mean, yeah, normally, but we are talking about data, and I'm not sure which video I watch that if anything, it may affect too much.

 

I've completely forgotten, I'm having data, and I'm not gonna risk losing it, even though it's a short distance.

[Bismut]

4 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

And solutions running more M.2 requires bifurcation. Some how, he managed to find one that uses a simple switching/split controller. Yes, it's x1 lane for each M.2, but it still faster than SATA SSD.

I have seen those, but they were like 100-150€ from China. Cool to know that there are more options, I believe that that controller was either shared or split bandwith. Not quite sure.

 

6 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

I remember that it was hitting the card's heat sink. Then again, I installed it while the my tower is standing up, not lying down. Might check again when I have my 2 4TB PCIE SSDs.

So? The heat sink does not matter too much, as long as you are still getting some airflow over it. I would recommend sticking a small fan running at super low speed next to the card, just to avoid overheating in summer or so (if your case is not super well ventilated already)

 

7 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

I mean, yeah, normally, but we are talking about data, and I'm not sure which video I watch that if anything, it may affect too much.

You could just test it. But this video basically proves that performance is not affected as much, although x16 should be better still. der8auer has a video about a GPU that was sort of broken because it only ran at x8 and there was some performance loss because of that, although I am fairly certain that the card was OCd a fair bit.

 

11 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

I've completely forgotten, I'm having data, and I'm not gonna risk losing it, even though it's a short distance.

As in, corruption in your GPU memory or the SSDs? The latter seems pretty unlikely tbh

[AlfaProto]

19 hours ago, Bismut said:

So? The heat sink does not matter too much, as long as you are still getting some airflow over it. I would recommend sticking a small fan running at super low speed next to the card, just to avoid overheating in summer or so (if your case is not super well ventilated already)

Oh yeah, why am i thinking of that? The SSD(s) won't run at its full potential, since it's only have x1 3.0 lanes.

 

18 hours ago, Bismut said:

You could just test it. But this video basically proves that performance is not affected as much, although x16 should be better still. der8auer has a video about a GPU that was sort of broken because it only ran at x8 and there was some performance loss because of that, although I am fairly certain that the card was OCd a fair bit.

 

As in, corruption in your GPU memory or the SSDs? The latter seems pretty unlikely tbh

Currently, I don't have the drives yet, and I only have 1 TB PCIE SSD as portable device.

 

Vertical PCIE mount for the SSD. My case is the last era before PSU shroud was introduced.

 

[Bismut]

1 hour ago, AlfaProto said:

Vertical PCIE mount for the SSD. My case is the last era before PSU shroud was introduced.

I do not have one either, a really quick and dirty solution could be flipping the PSU around so it draws its air in over the add-in card. Not great for the PSU because it will get colder air than it would otherwise, but it should be fine.

 

1 hour ago, AlfaProto said:

Oh yeah, why am i thinking of that? The SSD(s) won't run at its full potential, since it's only have x1 3.0 lanes.

They can still get warm at the very least, but it should be okay. I was surprised with how warm my SSD was getting, but placing an old 60mm AMD cooling fan sort of pointing at it solved that issue for good.